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== World of Warcraft ==
== Molten Core Guide ==
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== By: Incoherent ==
== Version 0.10.2 ==
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Current as of patch 1.10.2, I think.
This guide should only be found on gamefaqs.com. If you're a guild
wanting to share this over your forums, just link to the page right
before this. Seriously. Also, my email isn't listed in this guide for
a reason.
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| Table of Contents
|
1. Getting Started in MC
2. The Trash Mobs
3. The Bosses
4. Thanks and Copyright Notice
|
| 1. Getting Started in MC
|
Before you even get started in MC, you'll need a few things first.
| 1a. Attunement to the Core
The first step to entering Molten Core is to do the quest that allows
you to get in. This is called Attunement to the Core.
To get the quest, head down the chain toward Blackrock Depths. At the
bottom of the chain you will see a blood elf standing in a little room;
he gives the attunement quest.
What follows is the quick way of doing an attunement run. If you're
planning on doing a full run of BRD anyway, you'll come across the core
fragment regardless. But honestly there's not a whole lot in BRD worth
doing.
To do the quest, go into BRD. Using the Shadowforge Key, go to the big
circular area overlooking Incendius, then jump down to the south side.
If you need fire resist, feel free to kill him, as he drops FR bracers.
The next step is a bit hard to explain, but if you look down into the
lava you'll see that along the south edge of the room there's land.
Jump down to it.
You'll see an island to your north, and another one to the north of
that. To get there, you'll need to learn to lava hop. This is fairly
simple: lava damage only hits you when you're actually in the lava, so
if you are constantly jumping you'll take a minimum of damage. If
you're doing this with a group, you'll have some combination of priest
shields, health potions, heal over time spells, and so on. Note that
the second leg is the longest. Also note that there are fire elementals
on each island; they're not particularly difficult for a group, but be
aware of them. Head for a bridge on the other side of the room. The
bridge leads to a big green portal, which leads to MC itself. Right
outside the big green portal will be a rather ordinary looking rock,
which nonetheless is the rock you're looking for. Get the core fragment
to complete the quest.
Note that if you're in a raid group, entering the portal will put you
into Molten Core, and leaving once inside will dump you out next to the
blood elf who gave you the attunement quest. Once you complete the
quest, to enter MC you can either click the core fragment next to the
blood elf, or you can take the slightly more dangerous route of jumping
through the window to his right (your left as you look at him).
| 1b. Some Gear that Doesn't Suck
To clear all of MC, you essentially need two sets of gear: a "stats" set
and a "fire resist" set. Where exactly to find this gear is a bit more
detail than I really feel like going into, especially because there are
usually multiple options for each slot for each class.
A good benchmark is that your gear should be your class's blue set or
better. Most of the class sets are adequate but not great; consult
other people of your class or (shudder) the WoW forums to determine what
pre-raid gear you should be looking at. This gear can be found in any
of the "big 4" instances: Stratholme, Scholomance, Blackrock Spire, or
Dire Maul, and if you've had the chance Zul'Gurub and Ruins of
Ahn'Qiraj.
So you've looked on Thottbot for blue gear for your class, you've run
the 5 million [name of instance] runs for [name of item] to drop, now
it's time to worry about fire resistance. Fire resistance is only
useful in a couple of fights, but everyone needs it. Ranged DPS and
healers should have 100-150, melee DPS should have 150-200 if possible,
and tanks need as much as possible up to 315 (the most that will give
you a benefit on a level 63 mob; nothing in MC is higher than that). As
much as possible, try to make a FR set that doesn't sacrifice all stats
(in other words, don't wear all greens of +fire resistance, although it
may be necessary in a couple of slots). As you run MC, you'll get loot
with fire resistance on it, and you'll be able to craft items with cores
and core leather that have lots of FR on them; give these to tanks first
to max out their fire resist, then start crafting for everyone else.
| 1c. A Balanced Raid Group
Next, you'll need a balanced raid group. Ideally you'd have 5 of each
class available to you, for a total of 40. There's some room to shuffle
people around based on availability, but try to stick to that as a
general formula.
Get all of these people attuned and geared, then find a time. You'll
need several hours where everyone can be there to really progress at
all; although the raid timer system means you don't need to run the
entire instance in one sitting, you'll incur a substantial penalty by
reclearing to whatever boss you left off on.
| 1d. Things to Download and Install
I'll just come out and say it: Everyone in your raid needs to download
and install CT_RaidAssist, and know how to use it. It does a number of
things for you: automatically announces certain events, lets raid
leaders make announcements using /rs, and presents healers with a much
more intuitive and easy-to-use raid UI than the built-in one.
Also, you should really get some form of voice chat; Teamspeak and
Ventrilo are the two big ones. Even if not everyone in the raid can
talk on it, everyone should be able to listen, and at the very least
raid leaders and main tanks should be able to speak in it. This has
obvious organizational advantages (being able to say things while still
fighting without stopping to type).
| 1e. Consumables
This should go almost without saying: bring consumables. Everyone in
the raid should have 300 FA and a stack of bandages. Everyone should
have potions: Major Healing for just about anyone, and Major Mana if
applicable. (Greater Dreamless Sleep is nice, but won't be of much use
in MC due to the encounter design.) Other things worth considering:
whatever food is the most useful for your class (+12 sta/spi, Nightfin
Soup, etc.), Night Dragon's Breath and Whipper Root Tuber (since these
don't share the potion cooldown), and other types of buffs, up to and
including flasks and Blasted Lands buffs. Yeah, they're a bit of a
crutch, but if it makes the difference, it's worth it.
|
| 2. The Trash Mobs
|
Trash mobs are defined as anything that's not a boss. These have a
chance to drop tier 1 set bracers and belts of every type, as well as
crafting materials.
| 2a. Molten Giants
Molten Giants aren't terribly complicated. They come in pairs, hit
reasonably hard and do moderate AE damage. Spread them out, wait for
the tank on each one to build up some aggro, then kill one, then the
other.
| 2b. Firelords
Firelords do fire damage. (Wow.) They also have two main abilities:
- Soul Burn, which silences the target and does 250 damage per tick.
This is a magic debuff, so you should dispel it.
- Periodically a lava spawn will appear. As in Warcraft 3, if you leave
it there long enough it will split into two spawns, then four, and so
on. When one of these comes up, immediately switch to it and kill it,
then go back to the Firelord.
| 2c. Lava Annihilators
Lava Annihilators are fun because they reset their aggro every few
seconds. You can attempt to tank them by having every warrior rotate
taunts on it, or you can just burn it down; it doesn't hit particularly
hard. Incidentally, these are banishable if you get adds and need to
deal with them first.
| 2d. Lava Surgers
Surgers look like Annihilators, but instead their gimmick is that
periodically they'll pick a random target and charge them, doing 1000
damage and a knockback to anyone in the way. Like annihilators, these
are banishable. Also, after Garr dies, these stop respawning.
| 2e. Ancient Core Hounds
Ancient Core Hounds come in several flavors. All of them have in common
that the tank should turn the doggy away from the raid to avoid getting
everyone breathed on. The various abilities they may have:
- Ground Stomp, a 3 second stun with a large radius.
- Cauterizing Flames (magic), which gives -200 FR.
- Ancient Dread (magic), which slows casting and melee by 50%.
- Ancient Despair, which is essentially an AE Scatter Shot
- Withering Heat (magic), which reduces max HP by 35%.
- Ancient Hysteria (curse), which reduces intellect and spirit by 50%.
Ancient Core Hounds stop respawning when Magmadar dies, but respawn
fairly quickly before that.
| 2f. Flame Imps
You'll encounter these on the way to Lucifron and Magmadar. They come
in a pack, which you should AE to death. This should be fairly
straightforward.
| 2g. Core Hound Packs
Between Lucifron and Magmadar there are packs of five Core Hounds.
Unlike their Ancient relatives, these don't have random debuffs. They
will put a stacking DoT on their target which does physical damage. But
the big problem is that when one dies, after 10 seconds if there are any
living Core Hounds nearby it will revive with full health. So you need
to kill all five at about the same time. (A Core Hound from another
pack will also revive it, if you managed to pull two packs.)
Assign one hound to each tank. Pull them together, then AE them all to
death, using melee DPS to keep them even (so if you see one's going down
more slowly, change targets to it.) Once the pack disappears, you can
pull the next one.
| 2h. Molten Destroyers
Destroyers are Molten Giants on steroids. They hit harder (much harder)
and do much more AE damage. After Gehennas you'll start seeing
Destroyer/Giant pulls and Destroyer/Destroyer pulls. With a
Destroyer/Giant pull, which to kill first is mostly a matter of
preference: since the tank on the Destroyer will need much more healing,
it may be worthwhile to kill it first, or you may want to take out the
Giant, which is much easier to kill.
| 2i. Lava Packs
Lava Packs are groups of 3-4 mobs which make up much of the second half
of the instance's trash. They consist of a Flameguard, a Firewalker,
and either a Lava Reaver or two Lava Elementals. The Reaver or
Elementals can be banished, and should be, until the Flameguard and
Firewalker are dead; use Curse of Shadows to ensure a full duration
banish and avoid any nasty surprises from Banish breaking early. Also,
the entire raid should be wearing fire resistance for these.
Here are their abilities, in the order you should kill them:
- Firewalker: Has a fire resistance debuff, an armor debuff, and likes
to throw 3k fireballs at things. (This is also why the entire raid is
wearing FR; after eating a 6k fireblossom crit and dying one too many
times, you'll understand why.)
- Flameguard: Does an AE fire attack, and a frontal cone fire attack.
Point it away from the raid.
- Lava Elemental: Does a frontal cone AE called Pyroclast which does 250
damage a tick and stuns. This tends to happen right when it unbanishes.
Kill whichever one unbanishes first, then the other.
- Lava Reaver: Hits rather hard, and cleaves rather hard. Have all of
the warriors in front of him to eat the cleaves.
|
| 3. The Bosses
|
Because that's what you're really interested in, right?
| 3a. Lucifron
Lucifron is the first boss in MC, and the first big test. Like nearly
every MC boss, he has adds. Put a tank on each one, and assign a hunter
to each warrior to pull to them.
Position the raid back in the back of the cavern. Everyone should stay
far away from the entrance to the imp cave, because if you stray too
close you will probably aggro the imps and wipe the raid. Pull the two
adds back to the back of the cavern, and Lucifron near the big rock on
the east side of the cavern.
The main trick to Lucifron is dispelling. This is, for your healers, a
crash course in mass dispelling. This is because Lucifron has three
main abilities to be worried about:
- Lucifron's Curse: This is a AE curse which doubles all ability costs.
This needs to be removed IMMEDIATELY on the healers, for fairly obvious
reasons.
- Impending Doom: This is an AE magic effect much like Call to the
Grave in Scholomance; it causes 2000 damage if not dispelled in 10
seconds.
- Dominate Mind: Think Gnomish Mind Control Cap. Also magic. This
should be your first priority when dispelling. Warriors should burn
Intimidating Shout before the fight to avoid having people feared into
the imp cave you just came from.
So paladins if you have them (and priests if you don't) should be madly
dispelling magic, and druids/mages should be madly decursing. In
between doing that, healers should be divided into roughly even groups
for each tank (or set some of them aside to heal the rest of the raid).
Once you've figured that out, DPS classes should kill first one add,
then the other, and finally Lucifron.
Lucifron drops boots, gloves, and miscellaneous other items, as well as
one Tome of Tranquilizing Shot, which teaches a hunter the Tranquilizing
Shot skill. For the purposes of this guide Tranq Shot is useful only
against Magmadar. Speaking of which...
| 3b. Magmadar
Basically, don't bother trying Magmadar unless you have at least two
hunters with Tranquilizing Shot. It'll only end in tragedy and repair
bills. If you have 2 or preferably more, continue onward.
Fight Magmadar in the center of the big circular room where he stands.
Face him south, toward where Lucifron was; melee DPS should be behind
him, and ranged DPS can be anywhere as long as it's away from him.
The main thing about Magmadar is that he frenzies. You'll see the emote
"Magmadar goes into a killing frenzy", at which point his DPS goes way
up until someone fires a Tranq Shot at him. So this fight is all about
hunters. Every hunter with Tranq Shot should be in a rotation, since
it's on a cooldown. Basically, each hunter should have two macros: on
his turn, he fires his Tranq Shot and tells the next person in the
rotation either to fire theirs immediately (if it missed), or just that
they're next (if it hit). Obviously missing is bad, so +% to hit gear
is good. (Ideally you'd have 8-9% to hit.) If you have 4-5 hunters
with the skill, consider pairing them off and having them both fire
simultaneously.
Other than frenzy, Magmadar does a couple of abilities which are
problematic when put together. The first is that he fires blobs of lava
which continue to burn (for something like 600 damage a tick) after they
land. If one appears near you, MOVE. The second is an AE fear. Of
course, this will inevitably make you run into a lava blob. Yeah, we
know. It happens. This is why you carry bandages.
There are two groups of people who should never get feared: the main
tank, and his healers. Magmadar's fear is on a 30 second timer.
(You'll get CTRA warnings 5 seconds in advance, at least after the first
one.) So is Berserker Rage. Coincidence? Hardly. If you're the MT,
it's your job to switch momentarily into Berserker Stance, pop Berserker
Rage, then go back to Defensive, thus absorbing the fear. Alliance
groups also have the luxury of using Fear Ward if you have dwarf
priests. The important thing is that the MT never get feared, and
therefore that Magmadar never move. If he moves, it puts the healers
out of position and probably in fear range.
The MT's healers should also never get feared, so long as they stand at
the maximum healing range, and so long as the MT is always standing
directly between them and Magmadar. To find the max healing range,
start out of range, then slowly walk forward until your heal buttons
just light up. (Or start in range and back up until you're not, then
move slightly forward.) Most of the healing should be on the MT, with a
few people scattered around to heal the rest of the raid when they get
feared through lava spits.
So if all of that goes according to plan, DPS should reduce Magmadar's
health to 0. Congratulations, purples. Magmadar drops tier 1 set pants
and other miscellaneous things.
| 3c. Gehennas
Like Lucifron, Gehennas comes with two adds. Same deal with offtanks
and hunters as before. Pull the adds back around the corner toward the
entrance, and pull Gehennas back in the direction he's facing. Most of
the raid should start back by where the adds are going to be pulled.
Gehennas's main source of DPS is randomly targeted. One is a 2000 or so
damage Shadowbolt, and the other is Rain of Fire for several hundred
damage a tick. You can't do anything about shadowbolts, but you can and
should run out of Rain of Fire if it's going to hit you.
His other ability is a curse which reduces all healing effects by 75%.
You should assign a mage solely to decursing the MT, and all
mages/druids should be decursing as well.
Divide healers the same way you did for Lucifron: 3-4 on each tank, the
rest spot-healing the rest of the raid.
As an alternative positioning, clear the trash all the way around
Gehennas (almost to Garr), position everyone but the MT, his healers,
and the designated decurser behind the large pillar down the hill from
Gehennas, then pull the adds around the pillar and pull Gehennas in the
same place in the middle of the clearing. The advantage of this is that
most of the raid will be out of line of sight of Gehennas, and therefore
will not be targetable by any of his abilities. Rest of the strategy is
the same, though.
That's it for strategy... kill adds, then kill Gehennas. Rain of Fire
can make this encounter challenging, though. Gehennas also drops tier 1
set boots and gloves, among other things.
| 3d. Garr
OK, time for some real fun. Garr has 8, count'em, 8 adds. The strategy
here varies from guild to guild, so I'll go into why, and then give my
suggestion.
Garr's adds are banishable rock elementals. They're not particularly
hard, which is good because eventually you will have to kill them all,
and when they die they do 1500-2000 AE damage and knock you into the
air. Also, every time one of Garr's adds dies, Garr attacks roughly 10%
faster. However, if Garr's life gets low enough, and one of his adds is
not banished, Garr will explode one of them, causing 4000 or so AE
damage plus the knockback. And if Garr explodes the last add, bad bad
things happen.
So the question is, how many do you kill before killing Garr? If you
kill Garr without having all the remaining adds banished, he explodes
them. If you kill too many of them, and your warlocks aren't on top of
rebanishing, you might run out of them.
Assign as many warlocks as you desire, one to each add. We use 4 of
them to start out. Each warlock should have his Voidwalker out to
hopefully get aggro on the add if it comes out of banish, so it doesn't
immediately go and squish the warlock who banished it. Also, realize
that with Curse of Shadows, the adds are not likely to break banish
early; a banish timer mod will help you time the recast to just hit it
as it comes out.
Assign offtanks to the remaining adds, and have a hunter pull to each of
them. Also put a couple healers on each tank. As each add dies, the
healers on that tank should switch to the MT to offset Garr's increased
DPS.
The pull is always a bit dicey, since you're never sure if all 9 people
actually have the correct targets. It doesn't really matter where you
go with them; Garr's room is very large, so as long as you spread them
out you'll be fine. (The one caveat is that if you pull Garr too far
away from his adds, they become unbanishable, which is bad. Don't move
Garr too far away from where he starts.)
Oh, and one more thing: Garr himself has an AE dispel, which will eat
the buffs of anyone near him. Not a particularly big deal, but don't
bother putting full raid buffs on the MT or anyone near him.
As for our strategy, we banish 4 adds, offtank and kill 4, then Garr
himself, then the remaining adds. The last one is designated "everyone
hug the Firesworn", so everyone gets to be blown halfway across Garr's
room. (Unless you resist it...) Garr drops tier 1 set hats, and other
goodies.
| 3e. Baron Geddon
Another fun fight, but requires some setup. Arrange the groups so that
every group has a dispeller of some form except for the groups of
warriors and rogues. Healing assignments are fairly simple: all healing
on the main tank, unless you're dispelling. (Some spot healing is nice
too; as a priest, an occasional Prayer of Healing is helpful.) Spread
the groups around Garr's room in a circle (away from the wall), with the
MT standing in the center. Leave the part of the circle near the door
clear. When you're ready, have a hunter pull Baron to the MT using Eyes
of the Beast. The MT should be wearing fire resist, but no one else
needs to.
To explain why, this is to mitigate two of Baron's abilities: Ignite
Mana and Living Bomb. Ignite Mana is an AE magic effect which burns 400
mana a tick. It needs to be dispelled quickly, thus the designated
dispeller for each non-melee group.
Living Bomb is where the real fun starts. Every so often, Baron will
randomly select someone as the Living Bomb. If you're the bomb (CTRA
will announce it for you if you have it), RUN AWAY. In 10 seconds
you'll explode, causing 2000 damage to everyone in a fairly large
radius, including yourself, and you'll fly into the air for another 1000
fall damage or so. Mages can Ice Block to remove the debuff if they
have it, and I assume paladins' Divine Shield will also remove it. If
the MT gets Living Bomb, all melee DPS runs away from him so he doesn't
have to move. If another warrior or rogue gets it, run toward the
tunnel, which should be clear of people.
The other ability Baron has is Hellfire, which looks like the warlock
spell, but pulses for increasing amounts of damage each tick, up to
several thousand at the end. Not even the MT can survive this, so don't
try; just run out of the radius of it. At 5% or so, Baron will emote
"Baron Geddon performs one last service for his master" and use a
stronger AE; basically, melee DPS should run away and let ranged DPS
finish him off.
If you're confident in your raid's ability to not blow people up with
Living Bomb, just stand in a clump near Garr's rune; this makes
dispeling easier but if one person goes AFK could potentially wipe you.
Baron isn't particularly hard, but you do need to pay attention in case
you become the bomb and blow up half the raid. Consider it practice for
Vael in BWL, who has a similar ability but much less room for error.
Baron drops tier 1 set shoulders and other items.
| 3f. Shazzrah
Shazzrah... is a really irritating fight. Not difficult, just
irritating. Put groups back in Baron positions, and pull Shazzrah the
same way as Baron.
Shazzrah's main attack is Arcane Explosion, which does several hundred
damage and has a range of maybe 15-20 yards. He also has an AE curse
which doubles all damage taken (this should be off the MT at all times,
and preferably off everyone else), and a self buff called Deaden Magic
which reduces magic damage by 50%. Keep Detect Magic on him at all
times, and assign a priest/shaman to keep this off him when it appears.
Oh, but there's more. Shazzrah also has Blink. He will randomly select
a target, Blink to him, and resume Arcane Explosion. If you show up as
Shazzrah's target, run into the center of the room, where presumably the
MT is waiting. By that point you've probably taken an AE or two...
another time for priests to use Prayer of Healing.
The strategy to kill him is to use only ranged DPS, sort of like a
Warder in Onyxia's Lair. Healers should just heal the MT or their
groups, and melee DPS can feel free to work on their bow/gun skills.
Shazzrah drops tier 1 set gloves and boots, among other stuff.
| 3g. Sulfuron Harbinger
Woohoo, more adds. This time there are 4 of them. Put an offtank on
each (plus a couple healers, of which one should definitely be a
priest/paladin), and tank them down the hill from Sulfuron. Tank
Sulfuron up where he spawns. Put all DPS back by where you came from,
up the hill a bit.
First to go are the adds, in order from left to right. Pull each add up
the hill and kill it. The adds have three main abilities: they cast
Shadow Word: Pain and Immolate on random targets (dispel this, it's
worth your while), and they heal themselves and each other. They are,
however, vulnerable to stuns and interrupts, which you can use to keep
them from landing heals. And the reason you pull the one to kill back
up the hill is to keep them from healing each other.
Once you're done with the adds, move on to Sulfuron. Sulfuron himself
doesn't do a whole lot. He'll stun the tank on him, back up a bit, then
start throwing spears at him, but even with that his DPS isn't
particularly high. This fight can take awhile, though, so be as
efficient as possible with healing. Sulfuron drops tier 1 set shoulders
and a few other things, including the ever popular Shadowstrike (read:
free Nexus Crystals).
| 3h. Golemagg
The first thing about Golemagg is that he has a lot of HP. This is the
longest fight in MC. This means that healers will need to set up some
form of rotation. The simplest way about this is to divide the MT
healers into 3 groups of 3 people. Every 30 seconds or so, rotate to
the next group (with some overlap time). Someone should be managing
this over /rs or voice chat.
Golemagg also has two adds. The healers on the offtanks will need to do
something similar, but only one healer needs to be healing at once so
you can do the same sort of rotation. The important thing about the
adds is to keep them far away from Golemagg, or else he will enrage
them, causing them to do more damage. Keep Golemagg about where he
spawns, and pull the adds back toward the other side of the cavern.
Unlike other fights, there's no point fighting the adds. They'll
continue to come back to life until Golemagg himself dies. Just offtank
them and forget about them.
Golemagg does several attacks. One is a randomly targeted fireball for
2000 damage or so. Another is a DoT that stacks on you as you attack
him. Melee DPS should be aware of this and disengage when they get too
many stacked on them. Also, periodically the entire raid will need to
stop attacking Golemagg so the MT can stop attacking to clear his debuff
stack. Beyond that, just slowly burn him down. At 10% his damage
increases quite a bit and he starts chaining an AE knockdown, so all
healers should start healing regardless of the rotation and all melee
should back off to avoid dying a very quick death.
Golemagg drops tier 1 set robes and several good weapons.
| 3i. Majordomo Executus
At this point your MC run is finished unless you have 6 people who have
finished the Hydraxian Waterlords' quest line and have Aqual
Quintessence with them. If that's the case, you should use it to douse
each rune scattered throughout the instance. (This can be done as you
go, obviously.) The runes are near Magmadar, Gehennas, Garr, Shazzrah,
Sulfuron, and Golemagg.
Once you douse all the runes, Majordomo Executus spawns. He has 8 adds
of two types: elites and healers. The healers can be polymorphed, the
elites cannot, and once 4 of the 8 in any combination are dead, the
healers become immune to polymorph as well. Once all 8 are dead
Majordomo submits, hands you a chest of purples, then goes off to
Ragnaros's lair. So, like Garr, there's some strategy involved.
Periodically, all 8 adds will gain one of two shields. The damage
shield will reflect 100 DPS or so of melee damage back to the person who
dealt it. The magic shield will reflect any magic cast on the mob back
to the caster, including stuns. When one of the shields comes up, all
DPS of that type stops. CTRA will announce the shields coming up and
going down. In addition, the elites do an AE for decent damage, and the
healers randomly shadowbolt people. Keep the elites spread out so you
don't take two AEs simultaneously.
Majordomo himself must also be tanked. He also has the annoying ability
to teleport people into the bed of coals in the center of his room,
causing them to take a few hundred damage a tick. If this happens to
you, get out of the coals. To avoid the tank on Majordomo getting
teleported, realize that Majordomo only teleports the person closest to
him, so a hunter or other similar class should stand directly on top of
him and eat the teleports.
As for strategy, you'll need 5 tanks as for Sulfuron, and healers on
each of them. Spread out Majordomo and the four elites, and have the
mages each assigned a target to polymorph. (Be aware of the magic
shield and recast Polymorph if there's any chance it will break while
the magic shield is up; the PvP trinket is helpful in case a mage
accidentally polymorphs himself.) Each tank should pick a sheep when
his elite is dead, so that when the sheep break the healers don't go
squish the mages. Healers should spot heal when their assigned tanks
aren't actively tanking something; also, this is a fairly long and
chaotic fight, so be careful with mana.
The kill order varies from guild to guild. The obvious order, to kill
all 4 elites then all 4 healers, tends to cause problems when the
transition doesn't exactly go right. A slight modification would be to
break one sheep, take both the last elite and the first healer to 10%,
then AE the two of them to death simultaneously. We currently kill 2
elites, then one healer, then the last two elites simultaneously (in the
same way), then the last three healers; as long as everyone's using the
main assist and the tanks know what's going on this isn't a big deal.
As mentioned before, once you kill all 8 of his minions Majordomo
submits, drops a chest full of purples (among other things, pieces for
the hunter and priest epic quests), and teleports off to Ragnaros's
lair.
| 2j. Ragnaros
Ragnaros's lair can be found down a passageway more or less across from
Gehennas's spawn point.
A couple notes about the mechanics of this fight: To start the Ragnaros
event, talk to Majordomo, who summons Ragnaros. Ragnaros gives a speech
then kills Majordomo, then turns to you. At this point the encounter
begins. If you wipe, the area is designed to be able to res almost
anyone without engaging Ragnaros (whose aggro range is not that large).
You can then restart the encounter by having the MT run up and engage
him. Ragnaros will despawn if you wipe more than 2 hours after
summoning him, at which point you can resummon him by defeating
Majordomo again (this time for no loot) and repeating the process.
First of all, everyone needs fire resistance for this fight. The two
main tanks need 315 fire resistance. (Ragnaros does almost all fire
damage; not all, but almost all.) If you're short, one option is to
zone out, run up to BRS, and have priests Mind Control the Scarshield
Spellbinders. These have a fire resistance buff which increases fire
resistance by 82-83. (No, this is not an exploit, it's been confirmed
by the Blizzard CMs on the forums.)
The Ragnaros fight consists of two stages. Stage 1 lasts 3 minutes.
Stage 2 lasts 90 seconds or until all of the Sons are dead, whichever
comes first. The two stages alternate until Ragnaros dies or you do.
- Stage 1 -
In Stage 1, Ragnaros is vulnerable. Note that he cannot move, so ranged
DPS cannot possibly pull aggro. Melee DPS, however, can. And as an
added bonus, if at any point there's no one within melee range, Ragnaros
will randomly choose a target anywhere in the zone and death touch them
for 6000 damage.
Besides that, Ragnaros has 3 attacks worth mentioning. One is an AE
fire attack which will be thrown at ranged DPS, and is the reason
everyone needs FR.
The second is a fireball which will be randomly thrown at someone. The
fireball does nothing to its target, but does fire damage to everyone in
an area around them and knocks them up in the air directly away from the
target. This means that ranged DPS and healers should be positioned
such that if anyone around you blows up, you aren't going to end up in
the lava.
The third, and most important, is Wrath of Ragnaros, which CTRA will
announce (except for the first one of the fight, and the first 1 or 2
after Stage 1 begins again). Wrath of Ragnaros hits everyone in melee
range of Ragnaros and knocks them back. If it hits anyone except the
MT, they'll probably end up in the lava, so they should back out 5
seconds before it happens. This leaves the MT. Wrath of Ragnaros is
resistable, but even with 315 FR it will hit occasionally. This is why
you need 2 tanks: if one gets hit by Wrath, the other should immediately
run in and take over tanking. If not, you'll get into that
aforementioned situation where Ragnaros starts death touching people.
Now, positioning. The MT will stand in the southeast portion of the
ring, the offtank to the north of that. The MT healers should stand
with their backs against the rock in the southeast. The ranged DPS and
a few healers for them should spread out along the southern portion of
the ring. Melee DPS should spread out along the "hook" in the inner
ring; when Wrath hits there's a small place on the northwest part of the
inner ring and a small place on the north part of the inner ring where
you can stand and not get hit by it.
Someone should be timing Stage 1 (yes, CTRA does this for you, although
it doesn't always work). At 20 seconds to go, ranged DPS should
collapse to Stage 2 positions. At 10 seconds, melee DPS should run
along the edge of the hook (away from Ragnaros, since you'll get a Wrath
of Ragnaros fairly late in Stage 1) to Stage 2 positions, except for the
MT and offtank who should stay put until Ragnaros actually submerges.
When this happens, Stage 2 begins.
- Stage 2 -
At Stage 2, Ragnaros submerges, becomes invulnerable, and 8 Sons spawn
around the lava. All of these converge in the south, where your melee
DPS should be waiting for them. Ranged DPS should move nearby to be
able to kill sons in that area, and healers should reposition a bit to
stay out of their path. The Sons have an AE mana burn, so keep them out
of the casters and healers.
Interestingly, bear form druids make fairly good tanks for Sons, as do
warriors obviously. Between all of those people, each of them should
pick up one or at maximum two sons. Healers concentrate on those two
classes. Other than that, use a main assist (have two lined up, so if
one dies you're not in too much trouble) and burn them down one by one.
When there are 1 or 2 sons left, or if the 90 seconds is about to
expire, put tanks back in position to pick Ragnaros up when he
resurfaces.
As a sidenote, sons are banishable and trappable. If you're really
desperate (say, 2/3 of your raid is dead and Ragnaros just submerged at
3%), you can simply wait out the 90 seconds then attempt to burn Rag
down, but this is not recommended as the sons will continue to eat
people's faces even after Ragnaros comes back.
Ragnaros should take one or at most two cycles of Sons to kill. He
drops tier 2 set pants, and a number of other nice things.
Congratulations, you've cleared MC.
|
| 4. Thanks and Copyright Notice
|
Thanks to the following people, guilds, and references:
- Goon Squad of Mal'Ganis, for obvious reasons
- Conquest's MC guide
- WoWWiki (so I don't have to remember the trash mobs)
- GameFAQs and CJayC (brown-nosing never hurt anyone)
- Blizzard, for incredibly obvious reasons; even though it makes me
crazy and eats my soul, I'm still playing WoW 18 months later.
This FAQ copyright 2006 Incoherent. The FAQ's over now, so go get
purples or something.